PhD in health sciences in Chandigarh

Where in Chandigarh and Mohali can you do a health-sciences PhD?

For doctors, PGIMER is the natural place to start. Nurses should check the National Institute of Nursing Education at PGIMER. In July 2026 it had 13 seats under six guides, which is more than most clinical departments had. Pharmacists can genuinely pick from all three institutions. There is one point for them to keep in mind. To get NIPER’s institute funding you need GPAT, GATE or NET, unless you have an M.D., MDS, M.V.Sc. or Pharm.D.

Why must a PGIMER guide sign your application before the test?

Every PGIMER seat is tied to one named guide, and the form itself carries that guide’s recommendation. PGIMER puts out a separate advertisement for each session. As per its PhD page, notices usually come in September or October for the January session, and in March or April for July. For July 2026 the online form was open from 10 April till 9 May 2026. The fee was ₹1,500. SC and ST candidates paid ₹1,200. Spend most of your time on the seat notice. In July 2026, Community Medicine and the School of Public Health together had 18 seats across ten faculty members. Medical Microbiology had 12, while many clinical departments had only one or two. The steps for that session went as below.

1. 1

   Read the seat notice

   Admission Notice 03/2026, dated 11 April 2026, gave the July 2026 seats guide-wise, from Anaesthesia to Virology. Later an addendum of 4 May added one more seat in Pharmacology.

2. 2

   Get a faculty member to sign

   You have to name one faculty member, and that person recommends you on Annexure-6. The guide can say no, and you can apply in one department only. One guide can endorse one or two more names than his seats, so don’t wait till the last week to go to him.

3. 3

   Computer-based test

   The test ran for ninety minutes on 31 May 2026, with centres in the Chandigarh tricity or Delhi NCR. Part I is aptitude for 40 marks. In Part II you attempt 40 out of 100 subject questions.

4. 4

   Qualifying score

   General, OBC, sponsored and foreign candidates needed 40 marks, and SC and ST candidates needed 36. Scorecards were released on 8 June 2026.

5. 5

   Counselling with your guide

   On 29 June 2026, qualified candidates reported to Lecture Theatre-1 in Nehru Hospital along with their chief guide and original documents.

Is there negative marking? In the subject questions, yes. Section 11 of the July 2026 prospectus clearly says that 0.25 marks are cut for every wrong answer in Part II. For Part I it is not so clear. The exam summary shows a quarter-mark cut for the whole 90-minute test. Section 11 just says each aptitude question is of one mark. Our suggestion is to attempt the aptitude part as if the penalty applies there also.

Medical candidates need an MBBS, MDS or Master of Physiotherapy with 55%, or else an M.D., M.S. or DNB in the subject. Others need a master’s with 60% in a subject allied to medicine. That covers anything from anatomy and biochemistry to pharmacy and human genomics. On the social and behavioural side, candidates can come from psychology, social work, nursing, nutrition, public health, health economics, audiology or an LL.M. A master’s done through distance mode is not accepted.

Who gets paid at PGIMER: PGI fellows, project staff or own-fellowship holders?

Sort out the funding question before you even apply. As per the prospectus, admission becomes final only after you show proof of a fellowship, grant or research funds through the head of department. There are five categories of entry, given below.

• Own fellowship. If you already have a stipend-bearing fellowship from some funding agency, you don’t need to write the test. You still have to fill the online form, and your documents go in 15 days before counselling. The national schemes are listed in our fellowships guide.
• PGI fellowship. This pays a fixed ₹31,000 a month, plus a one-time thesis grant of ₹5,000. There is no DA or CCA on it. As per the prospectus there will be only six or seven of these in one session. In the July 2026 seat notice there were seven, and they went strictly by test merit.
• Research scheme employee. Here a faculty member pays you from an extramural project for the full three to five years. Your PhD has to be under that same person, and project-funded candidates also sit the test. Suppose you qualify but no project guide is available that session. Your result stays valid in this category till the application deadline of the next session.
• In-service. This category is only for PGIMER staff. You need three years of regular service and three original papers in PubMed, Medlar or Scopus journals. The head of department has to recommend you, and your age must be below 50. PGIMER’s own medical faculty are exempt from the test, but other staff are not.
• Deputed or sponsored. Your employer can sponsor you when you have three years’ service there, but not every employer counts. Those are central or state government departments, their autonomous bodies and government medical colleges. Sponsored candidates sit the test, and afterwards they serve the sponsor for five years. The money comes from the sponsor and not from PGIMER. Private hospitals are not allowed to sponsor.

Some national scores also give exemption from the test. These are a CSIR-UGC NET-LS, a UGC-NET in social medicine and community health or in forensic science, and a GATE score at the 95th percentile or more. But this exemption works only if you have joined the extramural project of a PGI faculty member by the application deadline. Fees are not much. Every year you pay ₹500 registration, ₹350 tuition, ₹900 laboratory fee and ₹720 amalgamated fund. On top of this there is a ₹1,000 security deposit and ₹1,100 for the viva. The bond is the bigger thing, and you need two sureties for it. If you leave in between, you have to refund the fellowship amount in three instalments and the security is forfeited. You get 30 days leave a year, and the course duration is three to five years. Before the public viva you must have minimum two publications. For clinical work your ethics committee has to approve first, so go through our ethics approval guide.

What does Panjab University’s 2026 entrance involve for pharmacy and biomedical scholars?

Panjab University conducts its PhD entrance only once a year. In 2026 the last date for registration was extended more than one time. After that, the revised schedule of 3 September 2026 fixed the test for 27 September 2026, with Chandigarh as the only centre. PU had said the results would come by 30 November. The fee was ₹2,850, and ₹1,425 for SC, ST and PwD candidates. There are two papers as per the 2026 prospectus.

• Paper I: one hour with 50 multiple-choice questions, 25 on research methodology and 25 on your subject. There is no negative marking.
• Paper II: two hours long. You write five descriptive answers out of eight questions of ten marks each, with at least two from the research methodology part and two from the subject part.

Your Paper II is checked only when you get 40% in Paper I, or 35% if you are SC, ST, BC or PwD. Overall you need 50%. Once you clear the PU entrance, you can use that result for three years. Some candidates are exempt from the test. These are NET (including JRF), GATE, GPAT, ICMR and ICAR qualifiers, direct fellowship awardees and regular PU teachers. The university accepts their applications through the year and processes them in four cycles, which close on 31 January, 30 April, 31 July and 31 October.

For pharmacists, the University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences gave 40 slots in 2026. These were in pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacology and pharmacognosy, each one combined with pharmaceutical analysis and quality assurance. The requirement is an M.Pharm. in one of the listed branches. A related master’s can also work, if the UIPS Academic Committee accepts it as equivalent. The Faculty of Science also had seats in biochemistry, biophysics and microbiology, and at the National Centre for Human Genome Studies and Research. There were seats at the Centre for Stem Cell Tissue Engineering and Biomedical Excellence, and in medical physics and nuclear medicine also. One thing in the prospectus is confusing. At one place it gives 70% weight to the Academic Performance Index and 30% to the interview. At another place it says selection rests solely on the interview. Please ask the department which rule they are following. University fellowships are “a few” only, that is all the prospectus mention, so keep some other funding in mind.

How does NIPER JEE lead to a PhD at NIPER Mohali?

The NIPER JEE Office is located at NIPER Mohali. This office conducted the 2026 admission for all seven NIPERs, namely Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Hajipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mohali and Raebareli. Dates are given in the NIPER JEE 2026 PhD brochure. For 2026 the form was open from 16 April to 23 May 2026. The computer-based test came on 13 June 2026. You select one stream out of chemical, biological or pharmaceutical sciences. After that there is an in-person interview at NIPER Mohali before one of four panels, and the fourth panel is for medical devices. In the merit list the test carries 85% and the interview 15%. A public notice dated 29 June 2026 gave the details of the counselling after that.

The qualifying degree must have 60% or a CGPA of 6.75. Health-science graduates will find more than one discipline that fits them. Pharmacology and toxicology accepts an M.D. in pharmacology. Pharmacy practice and clinical research is open for M.Pharm. (pharmacy practice) and Pharm.D. holders. Medical devices takes M.D. and MDS graduates. If you are having your own CSIR, DST, DBT or ICMR fellowship, you are exempt from NIPER JEE and you approach the NIPER directly. Institute fellowships are for four years at most. They continue only as long as you maintain a CGPA of 6.50 in every semester, and in return you give eight hours a week of assistance to the institute.